


Exponentiated

by weakinteraction



Category: The Culture - Iain M. Banks
Genre: Creative use of fields, Masturbation, Mind Sex, Other, Restraints
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-01
Updated: 2020-07-01
Packaged: 2021-03-04 18:14:27
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,365
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25010701
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/weakinteraction/pseuds/weakinteraction
Summary: A human and drone explore different ways of being intimate.(Sequel toReciprocated.)
Relationships: Original Drone Character/Original Human Character
Comments: 11
Kudos: 21
Collections: Turing Fest 2020





	Exponentiated

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Ololon](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ololon/gifts).



Hevala sat cross-legged on the floor, Venn-Arsic floating a half metre or so in front of her. Its ellipsoidal body, a little smaller than her torso, was completely obscured by a rippling aura field that showed all the colours at the positive end of the spectrum.

"Are you certain about this?" Venn-Arsic said.  
~It's why I got this thing in the first place, Hevala replied, deliberately using the lace. ~Are _you_ certain?  
Judging by the pale blue spots that erupted over its field, Venn-Arsic was anything but, but it answered firmly ~ _Yes._

And then, she could feel Venn-Arsic inside her mind, or rather, interfacing with her lace on a far lower level of protocol.

Hevala was shocked at the intimacy of the connection, despite everything she had read. Since they had admitted their feelings for one another months ago, they had done significant amounts of research. Although drone-human relationships were rather rare, in a civilisation with a total population since its inception nudging the quintillion mark, "rare" still gave you plenty of company. It turned out there were resources that had been maintained since the earliest days of the Culture detailing the different ways that such relationships could play out, from completely non-physical to in-sim to the extensive use of teledildonics. There were even, apparently, some couples that enjoyed physical skin-to-casing contact, though when Hevala had raised this possibility, Venn-Arsic had sadly said that its casing was deficient in sensors to really enjoy the experience. Hevala wondered, though, whether it might not be that it was too much of a reminder of the circumstances in which they had begun their relationship.

The resource they had kept finding themselves coming back to -- informally but very accurately referred to as "The Dronefucker's FAQ" -- had undergone extensive revisions a few centuries previously in the light of the invention of the neural lace. For the first time, according to at least some of the documents' many authors, humans could experience something of Thrall, the state two or more drones could attain when they redirected outputs and inputs exclusively between one another.

Hevala, having never had much previous interest in laces, had enthusiastically had one implanted. Over weeks it had grown inside her head, blossoming like a nanoware flower until it completely interpenetrated with her brain at every level. She had taken a few weeks more to become confident in using it, before finally feeling able to say to Venn-Arsic that morning, ~I think I'm ready.

They had spent the day at a party -- one of Venn-Arsic's friends, a venerable old drone who still used one of those boxy form factors that had been in fashion millennia ago, had decided to leave the Orbital to transcorporate into a group mind being formed by some of its oldest friends. But all the way through, Hevala had felt a nervous excitement about what they were going to do when they returned home.

She realised with a start that she was not simply losing herself in a reverie, she was seeing those recent memories playing out as Venn-Arsic accessed them. She was seeing them from Venn-Arsic's point of view, as the link between them established itself and strengthened.

Hevala made a conscious effort to direct her attention towards Venn-Arsic, rather than simply ending up in a feedback loop of her own sensations. She could feel its interpretation of the same events, cross-correlated with her own. She suddenly knew, with absolute certainty, that Venn-Arsic had thought that if it were ever to eventually become part of a group mind, it would only be one that she was also part of. Knew too that it had thought that since long before they had got together.

That specific awareness gave way to the general knowledge that, within Venn-Arsic's mind, there was a mental model of her, one that the drone had built up over the years of their acquaintance into greater and greater levels of complexity. She could sense that Venn-Arsic had similar datasets for everyone it knew, drone, human, and even Mind, but none as rich as the one it had devoted to her. Before the thought had even framed itself as a conscious question, she became aware that as far as Venn-Arsic was concerned, it was the fact that she was hard to predict, that it had to keep adding to its model of her to understand her better, that constituted loving her in the first place.

And then, her awareness switched back to what Venn-Arsic was aware of inside her mind. Although her mind was not as neatly organised as Venn-Arsic's, she herself had interconnections between her memories and her emotional centres that amounted to the same thing: a tiny Venn-Arsic that lived in her head all the time.

Despite the fact that she was still wearing her elaborate party dress, and Venn-Arsic was still surrounded by its fields, Hevala suddenly felt as though they were thrillingly naked before each other, far more exposed and vulnerable -- and, too, far more seen and known, and far more supported and strong -- than she ever had with an organic lover.

She could feel the way in which each of them, in their own way, was updating their mental model of the other. If this was what Thrall was all about, getting to know each other so very intimately, she could barely understand why drones ever left the state.

And yet, there was deeper still to go. She could feel the _physicality_ of Venn-Arsic in a way she had never imagined, understood that there really was very little distinction between it and its fields. She had thought of them a moment ago as like clothes, but she realised now that they were more like skin, both barrier and intermediary between Venn-Arsic and the outside world. At the same time, she could feel Venn-Arsic accessing the information flooding in from her senses, and it was only in doing so that she became aware of how flushed she was, how ragged her breathing had become, how every part of her was throbbing with _need_. And the equivalent was true for Venn-Arsic -- it was running at its maximum processing speed to keep up with the wealth of information it was reading from her lace, its internal heat sinks close to being overwhelmed.

Hevala's eyes snapped open. Venn-Arsic was still hovering in front of her, glowing bright white. But with the connection still in place between them, she knew that this was nothing to do with anger, but that it had simply been forced to go blackbody to shed excess heat. Venn-Arsic began to retreat from her, in light of its knowledge that the temperature of her skin was rising as a result of its proximity.

The connection began to attenuate, and as she returned to simply being in her own mind, Hevala felt as though she was swimming back upwards after diving deep into a dark, strange ocean. Eventually, she got to a point where she could gland _Snap_ , and it was like breaking the surface as her awareness returned purely to herself.

She rocked back and forth for a moment, watching as Venn-Arsic faded, still in blackbody mode, to an orange-red glow. That was eventually replaced by a very different red, and it floated closer again.

"That was ... intense," Hevala said.

"Indeed," Venn-Arsic said. "I have never-- As you say, intense." Its fields rippled with a grass-green shade Hevala had never seen from any drone. "I've never had to use those emergency thermoregulation protocols before."

"Was it too much?"

"On the contrary," Venn-Arsic said, "I am concerned that it was too little from your point of view." After a pause, it went on, "Your own temperature remains elevated, albeit not to the same extent."

The _Snap_ had taken the edge off her awareness of her own arousal, but it was undoubtedly still there. If she had been with an organic lover, she would have pressed herself up against whatever part of their anatomy seemed most likely to yield results; if she had been alone, she would undoubtedly have already begun stroking herself to a very satisfying orgasm. As she glanded _Sharp Blue_ and hitched up her dress, she said, "I want you to watch me."

Venn-Arsic's aura turned another colour she'd never seen before as she held her underwear out of the way with one hand and used the other to cup her mound. She started slowly but her pressing need, along with the combined effects of the drugs in her system, quickly saw her rubbing her clit urgently.

As she got closer, though, she became aware of the light brush of one of Venn-Arsic's effectors against the back of her hand. ~ _Please,_ it said. _Let me._

~If you're sure, Hevala replied. They'd talked about doing something like this, but Venn-Arsic had wanted to try Thrall first. But perhaps it was what it had seen in her mind that had convinced it.

~ _I'm sure._

Hevala let the hand she'd been stroking herself with drop away, still using the other to hold her clothes away. The effector that had brushed against her hand slid across to her clit.

Hevala squirmed uncontrollably at the sudden touch.

~ _I apologise. I will decrease the intensity._

Hevala caught her breath and waited for the return of the tickling sensation.

~I think that might be too low, she said after a moment.

Venn-Arsic didn't reply directly, but its aura tinged momentarily grey with determination. She began to feel it again, but as soon as it was at all perceptible, it was too much. She squirmed again.

"I'm sorry," she said out loud.

"You have nothing to apologise for," Venn-Arsic said sincerely. "I merely hoped to be able to bring things to a ... satisfying conclusion, from your point of view. If you wish to return to taking care of things yourself, I will understand."

"Perhaps you should try a less sensitive part of me," Hevala said. She stood up and stripped off, the dress coming over her head swiftly and easily, her underwear quickly removed and kicked out of the way. "Though to be honest all of me feels pretty sensitive right now."

She felt Venn-Arsic's effectors brushing against the sides of her torso, like two hands.

"That's nice," she said. "Like a massage."

Venn-Arsic carried on roaming across her skin for some time, moving on to her back and her neck, then running up her legs from her feet to her inner thighs, but going, for the moment, no further. Then it added two more effectors, this time pushing against her breasts. When they focused in on her nipples, though, Hevala felt herself squirming again.

"I'm sorry," she said.

"I told you not to apologise."

"What if I'm apologising to myself?" Hevala said. "I've wanted this for so long, and now it's really happening and I can't handle it."

"Then we will find another way. A simulation, perhaps?"

"No, I-- I want to feel this, feel _you_ in reality." A thought struck her, one that she wasn't sure even in its access to her mind earlier Venn-Arsic would have been aware of. "How many separate effector fields can you project?"

"I'm not as practised at subdividing them as some, but easily a few nines," Venn-Arsic said. Its aura turned an uncertain blue. "Why?"

"Perhaps it wouldn't be a bad thing to be overwhelmed," Hevala said. "If you were holding me so that I couldn't keep wriggling away."

"You're talking about restraint," Venn-Arsic said.

"Yes," Hevala said quietly.

"I will monitor you carefully for signs that it is too restricting," Venn-Arsic said.

"I would expect nothing less," Hevala replied, but by the time she'd finished talking, she could already feel its effectors gripping her, not firmly, but well enough that she couldn't move. Her wrists and upper arms, her ankles and thighs, were all encircled, and she could feel fields pushing against her arse as well as the back of her head.

She had never been _held_ quite like this by a lover before. It was exquisite.

Then, the other effectors began, first on her nipples as they had been before they'd had to stop. Then she felt two tickling her earlobes -- after a moment, one slid down her jawbone to brush against her lips, an oddly beautiful kiss. She could tell that Venn-Arsic was using what it had seen of her sensory inputs to know exactly which parts of her were most sensitive.

And then, in the most sensitive place of all, it started again. The field pressed up against her clit was practically buzzing, and Hevala felt as though she was going to come instantly. Somehow, though, Venn-Arsic was able to modulate things just so, so that she was permanently on the edge.

It took some time to realise that the sensation of floating she was having wasn't metaphorical -- Venn-Arsic had gently and without fuss used its grip on her to levitate her a few centimetres above the floor.

Suddenly the sensations on her nipples intensified, as though Venn-Arsic had gone from simply pinching them to twisting them. At the same time, another effector came into play -- whether Venn-Arsic had needed this long to calibrate it, or had simply been teasing her, she wasn't sure. This one parted her labia and slid into her cunt, oscillating back and forth within it and oh _fuck_ , this was really happening, Venn-Arsic was fucking her with its effectors, and it was even more intense than she could ever have dreamed of, and then she was coming, hard, and all those fields were holding her and stimulating her at the same time, oh _fuck_ , it was too much but she still wanted more, always more, how could you ever get tired of this--

Eventually, though, it was over, and Venn-Arsic floated her back to the floor before releasing its grip on her. She collapsed back onto a chair that the house had thoughtfully provided.

"That was amazing," Hevala said. "Was it ... Did it do anything for you?"

"Giving you pleasure was satisfaction enough," Venn-Arsic said. "Although I do look forward to exploring our mutual perceptions the next time we go into Thrall."

Hevala smiled. "I bet you do."


End file.
